Mutant butterflies found near ***ushima plant

this is a discussion within the Everything Else Community Forum; One legacy of the ***ushima nuclear disaster last year has already become apparent through a study of butterflies in Japan: Their rate of genetic mutations and deformities has increased with succeeding generations.
&quot;Nature in the ***ushima area has been damaged,&quot; ...

One legacy of the ***ushima nuclear disaster last year has already become apparent through a study of butterflies in Japan: Their rate of genetic mutations and deformities has increased with succeeding generations.
"Nature in the ***ushima area has been damaged," said Joji Otaki, a professor at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, who is the senior author of the new study.

The abnormalities, which the researchers traced to the radiation released from the nuclear power plant, include infertility,deformed wings, dented eyes, aberrant spot patterns, malformed antennas and legs, and the inability to fight their way out of their cocoons. The butterflies from the sites with the most radiation in the environment have the most physical abnormalities, the researchers found.
"Insects have been considered to be highly resistant to radiation, but this butterfly was not," said Otaki.
The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, cut off power to the ***ushima Daiichi plant, leading to meltdowns that released radionuclides including iodine-131 and cesium-134/137.The researchers combined laboratory and field studies to show the radionuclides caused the deformities and genetic defects. Butterflies netted six months after the release had more than twice as many abnormalities as insects plucked two months following the release, the team found. The rise in mutations means radiation from the accident is still affecting the butterflies' development, even though levels in the environment have declined, the study concluded. [See Photos of ***ushima's Deformed Butterflies]
"One very important implication of this study is that it demonstrates that harmful mutations can be passed from one generation to the next, and that these might actually accumulate and increase over time, leading to larger effects with each generation," said Timothy Mousseau, a professor of biology at the University of South Carolina who studies the impacts of radiation from ***ushima and from the 1986 Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine.
Mousseau, who was not involved in this study, added, "It is quite concerning to see accumulated effects occurring over relatively short time periods, less than a year, in ***ushima butterflies."